"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050401976.html?hpid=topnews">Resilient
Infections Worry Military Doctors" is a headline in the
Washington Post. It reflects a serious concern often noted
here at ScienceBlogs. I read it and worried, again.
But perhaps there is hope: maggots. From
News@Nature.com:
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070430/full/070430-13.html">Maggots
eat up resistant bacteria
Creepy
crawlies are the latest weapon in the anti-MRSA arsenal.
Published
online: 4 May 2007
doi:10.1038/news070430-13
Katharine
Sanderson
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">The drug-resistant bug
MRSA has a new adversary — the maggot. Researchers in
Manchester, UK, have just won a grant to compare maggots with other
more hi-tech treatments for people with diabetes who suffer from
infected feet...
...A small initial trial, published this February, showed considerable
success1. 'Larval therapy' (the polite term for maggot treatment) was
excellent for shifting MRSA infected tissue: in 12 out of 13 patients,
their wounds healed after between three and five applications of
maggots, each lasting four to five days. "It's primitive but
effective," says Boulton...
To top it off, they have a picture of a wound that is being treated
with maggots. I can't bring myself to post the photo here,
but for those with a morbid inclination, it is there.
We can hope that it might be possible to figure out what the maggots
are doing that is effective against
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRSA" rel="tag">MRSA,
and reproduce it in the form of a nice, clean, sterile, patentable
liquid.
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I would think that they are just eating the bacteria, just because the MRSA is resistant to antibiotics does not mean they are not yummy food for a maggot.
Why make the liquid you hope for patentable?
The patent idea is just an expression of cynicism. Like the report of Bill Gates patenting ones and zeros.